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Episode 15: Holidays or Holi-daze? Connecting in the Time of COVID
80 Plays4 years ago
Fara and Grant offer up strategies for coping with difficult family dynamics, accepting and embracing "the new normal", and making the most out of the season this year.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:00:05
Speaker
Give that a second thought. Separate the holiday experience from dealing with family issues or personal grievances. Thank you for joining us on doorknob comments, a podcast that we created to discuss all things involving mental health. We take the view that psychiatry is not just about the absence of illness, but rather the positive qualities, presence of health and strong relationships and all the wonderful things that make life worth living.
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm Dr. Farah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner. Thanks so much for listening to Dornap comments today. It's just me and Grant here wanted to go over and talk about some tips for getting through the holiday season, some things that we may have touched on before, but perhaps some other new
Impact of Economic Hardship on Holidays
00:00:48
Speaker
stuff.
00:00:48
Speaker
We understand that there's a lot of podcasts and blogs and advice about how to enjoy the holidays. This year is not the same as other years. A lot of people are experiencing hardship, economic hardship and loss of loved ones. For those people, our hearts
00:01:05
Speaker
go out to you. We're here as supportively as we can be. And our advice is to make sure you attend to your needs during difficult times, especially when you may be reminded of loved ones. What we're talking about today is for people who are
00:01:22
Speaker
coping with more basic problems enjoying the holidays, but who aren't facing more serious hardship.
Redesigning Holiday Traditions During Pandemic
00:01:29
Speaker
You know, in some ways, this season is going to be very different. But in other ways, I sort of see it as an opportunity to really take stock of traditions that might have
00:01:41
Speaker
not been working for people, people who were sort of going through a lot of the motions of either one holiday party after another without really too much thought of what they should be doing or wanted to be doing and what was meaningful to them.
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, and kind of redesigning the holidays. You know, in holidays past, when I've thought about, you know, the advice to give people for the holidays and how to deal with their families, you know, the typical issues are kind of like holidays can be challenging anyway, and I don't like the way my family acts when we get together. I don't like who I turn into, like I regress, I feel like I'm back in high school, or it feels like a chore.
00:02:21
Speaker
Farrah, it sounds like you're talking about using this crisis as an opportunity to take more ownership over the holiday experience. Yeah, in some ways, because there may be some things that people like about their current family traditions, some aspects that they really enjoy that are meaningful to them and that they want to
00:02:39
Speaker
continue and eventually pass on to their children. But there are also maybe some things that they're kind of ready to leave behind. Well, so think about it by comparison, say, the last year or the year before when we weren't in the middle of a pandemic. And certainly, from an evolutionary point of view, there's been disease throughout human history.
00:02:59
Speaker
And people would usually be together during those times, but they wouldn't be dealing with social media and trying to have video parties and stuff like that. But in years past, you could have gotten on a video call and had a video party. This year, it feels more like, well, maybe we should do
Family Gatherings and COVID-19 Risks
00:03:18
Speaker
it.
00:03:18
Speaker
The other thing though is I see debated on social media quite a bit that a lot of families are going to get together over the holidays in spite of COVID-19 and that it's very divisive for people. So I hear stories like, well, my family is getting together in Long Island and even my elderly parents are going and they're not planning to get any testing and they're not quarantining and I'm worried. And I'm afraid if I tell them I'm not going to join them,
00:03:46
Speaker
they're going to get mad at me. Am I crazy? But that's been something that we've had to deal with kind of all along where people have different thresholds for risk. So for some people who really live for Christmas morning, the idea of not being together is unbearable. And for other people who can kind of maybe take it or leave it or are just able to delay that gratification and say, well, you know, we want to have one next year.
00:04:15
Speaker
We've seen that meme, right? Which one? Stay away from your family this year so you can be with them next year. There is a real risk and it's a different topic for another day had a people have such different views about the same thing. But people have different views about the same thing when it comes to holiday gatherings as well. And families are often not on the same page about what it's supposed to be like.
00:04:42
Speaker
In some ways, acceptance just like across the board is probably a good practice.
Gift-Giving: Generosity and Compromise
00:04:49
Speaker
When I think about the types of issues that come up, like who's hosting or gift giving is a really big one where grandparents might really want to give gifts and parents might not want
00:05:02
Speaker
the kids to get too many or whatever else, that fostering some understanding and just having generosity of spirit when it comes to that is important, meaning that if you know that it means a lot, let's say to your mother-in-law to be gift giving, maybe you can have some sort of a compromise, be really stealth, put a few of them away, maybe for a later time, but it's hard to tell people not to go overboard.
00:05:31
Speaker
Do you counsel people to distort the truth with loved ones in order to keep things smooth? Just hide away some of those gifts. Sure, send as many gifts as you want. Yeah, but I guess what I'm saying is it's natural to be annoyed.
00:05:47
Speaker
if you're not able to control every aspect of how the holiday goes, or you can't rein people in. But I don't necessarily, even if you tell the grandparents, oh, just one gift per child, if they show up with a huge bag, what are you going to do? You mean like, what are your options there?
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, how does it help anyone? It just ruins the holiday for everyone to get into a blow up fight over it. One of the easiest things and really one of the kindest is, I think, to direct our generosity to those who really and truly need it. That means thinking about what we can do for the kids who might not get any presence.
00:06:30
Speaker
What sorts of things do you do? They have like a drive at school where they wrap up certain gifts. A lot of them are kind of necessities like, oh, new sheets for a twin bed, that kind of stuff. And it always feels really good to pick that stuff out, wrap it up and have the kids bring it to school.
00:06:48
Speaker
We don't celebrate Christmas, so I don't have that. Can I ask you what you mean by stealth? You use that term from time to time. Oh, I think that a lot of times if we have the choice whether to do something really discreetly or to
00:07:07
Speaker
I guess be a little bit more overt in our feelings. I generally choose to just be discreet and stealth and kind of, you know, smile and nod and then address it for another day, mostly because I, and that's not something that I generally, I think I'm, I don't know, Grant, if you would agree, but I'm pretty direct. I guess what I'm saying is that the holidays are maybe not the right time to be direct.
00:07:37
Speaker
It's not the right time to be too controlling, I think you're
Managing Holiday Interactions with Diplomacy
00:07:40
Speaker
saying. And it's important to use diplomacy intact is how I would think about it. Yeah, and it's just kind of- And guile and cunning. Well, I mean, Santa Claus is stealthy, right? Right. He gets down that chimney, right? But if there was any time to table our objections about other people's behavior, I think that this is the time.
00:08:07
Speaker
I totally agree. I mean, yeah, definitely reminds me of, you know, I've been interviewed so many times about how to deal with the holidays. And one of the big things is like, the holidays are not the time to deal with family grievances. If you've got family grievances, you know, check your bags at the door.
00:08:23
Speaker
address it beforehand, if you really have to, or, you know, deal with it later on. But if you're avoiding your family most of the year, and then whenever you get together for the holidays, you know, that's the time to bring up, you know, stuff that, you know, that you complain about in therapy all the time, or unresolved issues, give give that a second thought, separate the holiday experience from
00:08:46
Speaker
dealing with family issues or personal grievances. Yeah. And I think it's a good exercise for people even to be able to do that and to say like, well, I didn't like how this happened, but I'm not going to address it right now. You're not going to like wrestle an extra cookie out of your kid's hand because you, you know, are not wanting to give them sugar, maybe on Christmas Eve, but it's something that you can kind of take note of table for another conversation.
00:09:14
Speaker
I definitely remember hearing my mother and my grandfather fighting when I was a kid. Like, I told you not to give them too many French fries. So there's a way where you have a little bit of like, no bless oblige. And also you don't want to put the kid in a difficult, your kids in a difficult situation. Kids are resilient though. I guess, I guess. But I think every kid deserves like a conflict free family moment.
00:09:44
Speaker
Well, yeah, certain times should be conflict free. But of course, we have to learn how to deal with conflict because it comes up. And if you shield your kids too much. But I agree that the holidays are not the time to expose your children to family conflict and tell yourself that it's good for them developmentally.
Family Conflict: Holidays vs. Weddings
00:10:01
Speaker
Same thing with weddings. It's the same kind of advice. Like a lot of times when people have problems in their family, they can avoid it most of the year. But when there's a big life event,
00:10:11
Speaker
like a wedding or a holiday, then people start struggling with how do I deal with Uncle Sid, you know, always brings this embarrassing subject up. And it's okay during the holiday dinner because no one else is there. But he can't bring it up at the wedding, right? And then like, well, you see him at a certain table and then you assign someone to like,
00:10:35
Speaker
chaperone him and pull him away and make sure he doesn't have too many drinks. Yeah. And if I think a lot of people end up kind of pulling an Uncle Sid without necessarily realizing it, we don't know what people are doing with their careers or their social lives or their romantic lives. So sometimes, you know, it's an opportunity to catch up. Grant's using a prop. What is that?
00:11:01
Speaker
I was thinking of the angel and the devil, you know, like on your shoulders and the devil is whispering something in your ear, like go, you know, pick a fight on the holidays. And the angel is like, don't do that. Be generous. It's the holidays. I don't have angel and devil figurines in my office. I only have Yoda and Darth Vader. And I was honestly, I was thinking if I could get them to balance on my shoulders and then somehow take a selfie, it would be kind of funny. It's not working. Glue them there next time I come by.
00:11:32
Speaker
Velcro maybe. Yeah. I think that we should put it out there that maybe it's also not the time to check in with relatives about stuff like their love lives or if they're working or not working.
00:11:48
Speaker
Certainly, if they don't want to talk about stuff like that, but again, some families, that's also a time for them to connect and talk about meaningful things.
Benefits of Smaller, Virtual Gatherings
00:11:56
Speaker
I think in my mind, the main hazard is if there's some kind of dysregulated conflict. Having smaller gatherings or virtual gatherings will take some of the weight off of that.
00:12:10
Speaker
You don't have the big hello and the big goodbye and the gearing up for walking into a household. It can be very anxiety inducing for a lot of people. There's a lot of pressure, a lot of expectations. Yeah.
00:12:23
Speaker
I think the hard part with virtual meetings is you have to do more on the other side, even though it can be protective because, you know, you're like not trapped there. There's not as much on the line. There's not as much preparation, you know, like the person hosting didn't go to a lot of trouble to cook or to order food or to set things up or clean the house. So, you know, it's a much lower investment. And so there's less pressure. But the flip side is then you have to be much more mindful and deliberate about making it connected and meaningful.
00:12:53
Speaker
And that at first can also feel awkward and unfamiliar. Yeah. Do you have any suggestions for how to do that? I don't. Okay. I can think of a couple of things. I think the power of like memory and storytelling
00:13:10
Speaker
is really strong. So it's a time, I think, to think about in advance what stories you might want to tell, how you want to reminisce, and of course there are going to be negative stories, but try to think of the positive ones and try to jog people's memories for, you know, the house that you lived in growing up or maybe people's names or faces that you haven't thought about, characters and
00:13:38
Speaker
That ends up happening at the holidays. People end up spontaneously telling stories. So I think there's going to be kind of an ice breaking effect when people first get on a virtual holiday dinner. It's going to be easy to feel awkward and like it's not working. So I think there's a way where maybe people have to give it a chance. And it may be helpful to have some structure, like you're saying, have some stories ahead of time or have some activities planned out where people are told ahead of time. Come prepared with some stories.
00:14:07
Speaker
and make them positive stories, by the way, not too embarrassing. Do you think people need kind of a safe word? Like if things get too difficult? Sometimes people are disinhibited on video calls. Like you're not with the person. So it's almost like you're de-realization, you know, like dissociated from there's actually another person there. Right, right. They're not a TV show. I don't know.
00:14:37
Speaker
a safe word. I think it's more that to understand that people use technology differently. Some people might be able to like, let's say, chat amongst themselves. But for older people, it's hard for them to realize that they can see everyone and everyone can see them. It's just an unfamiliar type thing.
00:14:57
Speaker
That might, it might be a good idea to make sure everyone is comfortable with the technology and, you know, help people troubleshoot. And to give everyone really a chance to talk without having someone who sort of monopolizes the conversation. So if that means putting like a group leader and having the host in charge to sort of go around or whether it means that people can just organically take turns.
00:15:22
Speaker
Well, how many people are we talking about? Well, I don't know. I don't know. I guess every get together is going to be different. Is there an ideal number or you know, you can have too many people like and then it's like a Thanksgiving webinar. It's much harder to participate.
00:15:37
Speaker
Right. Right. And it feels kind of circus-like.
Planning Virtual Gatherings: Tips and Suggestions
00:15:40
Speaker
So I think some more just planning it out and the number of people is going to be the ideal number of people will be different for everyone. I actually went to a school function, which I thought was really cool. They did these like breakout groups. And so you went from like the bigger group to the smaller one. I think that would be a fun idea just so that, just to me, like the sort of side conversations where you're talking to people privately and catching up with them, those are the more
00:16:07
Speaker
valuable times that I appreciate. Some of the same games people play together, you know, some families like to play games together, it's harder to play board games. But there's a lot of these kind of smart, funny, often psychological card games, where people ask a question and the group has to answer, you know, the question is, do you want to really take ownership and, and try to make it something special, you know, versus sort of succumbing to the possible bitterness? Mm hmm.
00:16:35
Speaker
Though for a lot of people, I mean, they're honestly just are relieved not to have to get together in these holiday things that don't work for them. And virtual meetings may be a better option in a lot of ways. Yeah, but if that's the case, then to me, that's an opportunity to think about are they putting themselves in a position where like every event is sort of like a special ops mission, you have to like, really think about
00:17:02
Speaker
I don't know. How to get in, how to get out. I don't know. And that maybe there's a better option. Like, oh, well, we just want to come by for brunch.
00:17:12
Speaker
Right? Well, I was thinking of your stealth mission before. Right. So what's the special ops thing? I just think that sometimes there's a lot of anxiety and a lot of planning that goes into getting together with relatives that might be a little more difficult or a little more like neurotic. As we say, I think a lot of times if they're one person like that can really hold people hostage to a
00:17:40
Speaker
Special ops stealth. Yeah, I mean, it's an intense time. It's an intense time. I'm feeling tense. Okay, well, you can relax.
00:17:52
Speaker
It's very loaded for sure, for sure.
Personal Holiday Plans and Redefining Traditions
00:17:55
Speaker
What are you planning for the holidays? Right now, really no plans to do anything virtual and no plans to get together with anyone outside my immediate family. So I'm kind of bummed. And I recently made the decisions that I want to try to, you know, make a formal Thanksgiving dinner, which I haven't actually ever done. With the turkey and everything? Yeah, I think it's nice to do kind of just for ourselves and with the kids. Do you know how to do a turkey? No.
00:18:22
Speaker
So it'll be interesting. That's an art. Yeah, I've heard that it's quite involved. So I'm a little bit intimidated. But I also might get some tips from some relatives. For sure, for sure. And there's going to be a lot of photos on social media. There's going to be a lot of people talking about how they're getting ready and then photos afterward. I've been really impressed by how creative people are in this time of pandemic. So what have you seen?
00:18:50
Speaker
I thought of a family that they basically for these four, you know, two parents, two kids, essentially wrote like a musical theater piece about the pandemic early on. And you know, it went viral. And it was very well done.
00:19:07
Speaker
But I know a lot of people are like gardening a lot. And when they cook food, really, it's like a running commentary on their culinary, you know, journey. And that can be a good way to kind of share with people. But, you know, hopefully we'll have some festivity. Right. Do you have any big plans yourself?
00:19:24
Speaker
No, I mean, usually I stay within my immediate family as well. There are other holidays where we have tended to get together, not so much Thanksgiving or the end of the year holidays, though we'll have New Year's Eve with uncles and sibling type people. We made reservations for an outdoor dining, Thanksgiving dinner, which sounds really lovely. Good.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, it does sound lovely. A friend last year put together a sort of flag football that Friday morning. We had a really, really great time with it, but obviously football this year I think is going to be tough, but we were trying to think of something distanced like maybe kickball. Frisbee. Frisbee. Well, frisbee, I think you can have like people getting into too close quarters with it. So I don't know. So we'll figure out it's sort of distanced.
00:20:17
Speaker
Field sports. Yeah. Yeah. Field hockey. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's tough. And it depends how you take it, too. I mean, I tend to kind of ride things out like this, I think, pretty smoothly. I kind of think of the long game. And I think it seems like things are looking up now. And by this time next year, if not sooner, hopefully, we'll have regained some kind of normality. But right now, it's pretty rough.
00:20:44
Speaker
But we hope everyone makes the most out of the holidays. And people who are in a difficult position, we hope that they still make the most out of the way that you're using your time. And I think that it can be sort of valuable and meaningful, even if it falls short of certain expectations.
00:21:05
Speaker
It ought to be okay and you can always ask other people too for ideas and ask people to come to Virtual gatherings if you're having them with a couple of things to do and what about the food part of it? Do you think people should like eat the same thing or they should prepare what they want? Well, that's I think the whole point is that it's an opportunity like if you want to have McDonald's on Thanksgiving night this year you can
00:21:32
Speaker
So I would, in a sense, take advantage of that and eat what you want, eat what you like. I personally like that tradition. Thanksgiving food is not my favorite food, but I like the sense of tradition and so I want to stick with it, but there are a lot of people that would rather eat pizza or whatever.
00:21:55
Speaker
Right. Well, I wonder if there's an app that makes the food look the same, even though you're eating different food. Maybe. I'm sure there is. You know, like those animal ears that put on people and I forget which apps. I don't want to mention them by name because we're not getting any direct benefit from any plugs.
Reflecting on Pandemic's Impact on Holidays
00:22:14
Speaker
It'll be interesting to see what people do with these holidays.
00:22:18
Speaker
and what people do with their time. And to me, it's all just information about what we really want and hold dear. Just data, but it's also data. Then seeing how people feel about it and reflecting on that, I think it can inform
00:22:35
Speaker
you know, the rest of the holiday seasons going forward. It's going to be in some ways really like a landmark that, you know, we're not going to forget. So I think that's an astute observation. I think that's true. And so sort of thinking about what it means and holding on to utility and significance for the future is a good idea.
00:22:57
Speaker
I think it's what we have right now. Very good. You sound a little wistful, but we'll make the most out of it. We wish everyone, you know, happy holidays, whatever your holidays are, whether it's Thanksgiving or going into the later winter holidays.
Listener Engagement and Feedback
00:23:13
Speaker
If you have any ideas or questions that you'd like us to address on doorknob comments podcast, please feel free to email us at hello at doorknobcomments.com.
00:23:24
Speaker
and you can find us on the web at www.doornobcomments.com. I'm Dr. Grant Brenner, and you've been listening to me and Farrah White. Thanks very much. Thanks.
00:23:43
Speaker
One disclaimer, this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of psychiatry or any type of medicine. It's not a substitute for professional and individual treatment services and no doctor-patient relationship is formed. If you feel that you may be in crisis, please don't delay in securing mental health treatment.